A Letter To John Grace – January 18th, 1864
My dear Friend, John Grace.
My two favourite authors from whom I may say I have derived more instruction, profit, and consolation, and I may add, more heart-searching examination than many others, are Dr. Owen and Huntington. I am now reading, as far as time and opportunity allow, the doctor’s Commentary on the Hebrews, which I purchased some time ago (the original edition in four folio volumes). That Epistle has always been a great favourite of mine, and Dr. Owen is truly great in those deep and important subjects which are there handled as the Person, sacrifice, blood-shedding, and death of our great High Priest, with His present intercession within the veil. These are the divine realities which form the food of faith. But how little are they received and believed in, even by some of whom we would hope better things. Most seem satisfied with hoping that they are the children of God because their feelings tally with what are described as marks of grace from the pulpit. But the Lord Jesus Christ, as the object of their faith, with the anchorings of hope and the flowings forth of love toward His dear name, with the various exercises whereby this faith in Him is tried, they seem to know so little of; and what is almost worse, do not seem aware of any deficiency. But a faith of which our once-crucified and now glorified Lord is not the subject and object, scarcely seems to be such a faith as the Scripture speaks of.
Look for instance at John’s First Epistle. What a stress he lays upon believing in the name of the Son of God; and how he separates all men into two classes, those who have, and those who have not the Son of God. He does not lay down a certain number of ever-fluctuating feelings as sure marks of heavenly grace; but comes at once to the three Christian graces, faith, hope, and love—faith and love in almost every verse, and hope in 1 John 2:3. I am also reading, as occasion serves, Goodwin on the Ephesians; but I cannot get on so well with him as I do with Owen. In some deep points of truth he is perhaps more profoundly versed than Dr. Owen, but there is so much repetition and such long unwieldy sentences that, after I have read them, I scarcely seem edified or profited by what I have read.
How different is the immortal Coal-heaver! How at once he comes to the very marrow of his subject, and in his original inimitable way throws off from his pen living words of the truest and most gracious experience, from the beginning of a work of grace up to the highest point of divine attainment. Like a master musician he runs up and down the chords of the heart, and strikes off without the least effort passages of consummate truth and beauty. It almost seems as if the book of the human heart with all its deceitfulness and baseness, the book of the new man of grace with all its varied pages, and the book of the Word of God, were all equally familiar with him, and that he turns alternately from one to the other with all the intimacy that a merchant has with his journal and ledger, and finds in a moment what order to write or what sum to pay. I must confess that no writer knocks the pen so completely out of my hand as the poor Coal-heaver, whose very name must now hardly be whispered in the professing Church.
Yours very affectionately in the Lord,
J. C. P.
Jesus is LORD! 
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